Prompted by news articles, especially a posting by our member Celtica (see thread below), I bought Sykes’ book in January 2008. I thought it might be useful if I transcribed blurbs from the different chapters where Sykes examines the DNA (both Y-chromosome and mitochondrial) in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. He never goes into detail about where in northern Spain the post-glacial population moved across the Atlantic 16,000 years ago. It could be a general area from south of the Pyrenees, at the time populated by proto-Basques, all the way west to Asturias, Galicia and northern Portugal. He does, however, devote time to the Milesian myth in the Leabhar Gabhala chronicles that describes a migration from Galicia to Ireland.

Again, skim through the earlier thread as a reminder of the issues raised by Art, Carlos, Mouguias, Bob, Terechu, Celtica and others:

Apart from the prologue and the genetic maps that appear in the appendix, which are part of the Oxford Genetic Atlas Project, this is table of contents:

12,000 years of solitude
Who do we think we are?
The resurgent Celts
The skull snatchers
The blood bankers
The silent messengers
The nature of evidence
Ireland
The DNA of Ireland
Scotland
The Picts
The DNA of Scotland
Wales
The DNA of Wales
England
Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans
The DNA of England
The blood of the Isles

‘About 24,000 years ago the temperatures in the northern latitudes around the globe, including the Isles, began to drop as the planet entered once again into the downward phase of a glacial cycle. These regular cycles of bitter cold and comparative mildness have been going on for at least 2 million years. They are caused by the slight shifts in the way the earth rotates and moves in its orbit around the sun…’

‘By the time of the coldest phase of the Ice Age, 18,000 years ago, there were no humans left in Britain, or anywhere else in Europe north of the Alps. The descendants of the Red Lady and their contemporaries had retreated to refuges in southern France, Italy and Spain…The warmth of the sun returned to northern latitudes and the ice began to melt. Our ancestors followed the herds north from their huddled refuges as the frozen land began to thaw.’

‘Most important of all, there was dry land connecting Britain to continental Europe. This was no narrow causeway, but a wide rolling plain joining eastern Britain to the rest of Europe from the Tyne in the north to Beachy Head near Eastbourne in the south. The entire southern section of what is now the North Sea was dry land intersected by wide rivers.’

‘The modern historian Norman Davies castigates archaeologists for their over-materialist approach to the past and their disdain for myth. I am on his side. While no one would be foolish enough to suggest that they are entirely accurate in every detail, myths have a very long memory. They are also extremely influential.’

Sykes cites an 1867 lead article in The Times (London) faulting the Welsh language for locking Wales in general backwardness and ignorance, as opposed to the progress-guaranteeing English. It reminded me of the PSOE/FSA’s contempt for the Asturian and Galician languages, pre-supposing that Castilian Spanish is superior: ‘The Welsh language is the curse of Wales. Its prevalence, and the ignorance of English have excluded, and even now exclude, the Welsh people from the civilization of their English neighbours…it is simply a foolish interference with the natural progress of civilization and prosperity.’

He cites the case of an Australian woman named Janet, whose family originally came from the Scottish island of Harris: ‘The intense spirituality of the Australian Aborigine, the connection to ancestors and the homeland, is in a muted form reflected in the search for Celtic roots. Displaced by the invader and forced to the margins before being forced into exile overseas, the Celt is perceived to be the British –or even the European- aboriginal. She continues, ‘to have Celtic roots is to demonstrate that one also has a rich, tribal heritage rooted deeply within a landscape that is both mystical and mythical’.’

‘We are taught nothing of the vigorous culture and the technological achievements of the Atlantic seaboard, the coastline stretching from North Africa in the south 2,000 miles to Shetland off the north coast of Scotland and beyond to Scandinavia. But this Atlantic zone has a prehistory as ancient and as colorful as any in the Mediterranean.’

‘But the most dramatic examples of continuity along the Atlantic zone are the great stone monuments, the megaliths, which rise from the ground from Orkney and Lewis in the north to Spain and Portugal in the south. These are a purely Atlantic phenomenon, owing nothing at all to the Mediterranean world. Could it be that it was by this route that the Celts of the Isles first arrived?

I will post more citations from Bryan Sykes’ book later. This is just a teaser…

On John Beddoe (b. 1826), a Victorian doctor based in Bristol who traveled through the British Isles recording the physical appearance of the natives:

‘On Ireland and the Gaelic west generally [west of Britain], Beddoe thought the people to be a blend of Iberians with a ‘harsh-featured, red-haired race’.’ The Celtic ‘type’, with dark hair and light eyes, he ventures to suggest, may only be an adaptation to the ‘moist climate and cloudy skies’ which they endure.’

On Sykes’ classification of ‘clan mothers’ in Europe by tracing mDNA signature mutations:

‘…The clan of Velda reaches its highest frequency in two places – northern Spain and among the Saami of northern Scandinavia. But it is far more varied, in the sense that it has accumulated far more extra mutations, in Spain than in Lapland. So I placed Velda herself in northern Spain, rather than in the far north of Norway and Sweden. The location of the clan mother has to have been habitable at the time. In Velda’s case, we know from the archaeological records that people were living in northern Spain 17,000 years ago, the date estimated from the additional mutations in the clan, but they were certainly not living in northern Scandinavia, which was under several kilometers of ice.’

‘On the male side, I had 2,414 Y-chromosome gene-coins from the Genetic Atlas Project and began to sort these into different piles according to their clans. Though the genetic details were displayed in a different form, the principle was the same. Each clan, of which there were five major ones in the Isles, traced a direct patrilineal line of descent right back to a common ancestor, the man who had founded the clan. In the Isles, these were the clans of Oisin (pronounced Osheen), Wodan, Sigurd, Eshu and Re.’

On the origin myths of Ireland recorded by Christian monastic scribes in the Leabhar Gabhala chronicles:

‘From our point of view, the Leabhar Gabhala chronicles four mythical phases of immigration…the last of these phases was the invasion of Ireland by the Gaels, bringers of the language and the alleged ancestors of today’s Celtic population. Indeed the principal purpose of the Leabhar Gabhala is to explain the presence of Gaels in Ireland. According to the Leabhar, the Gaels were descended from the sons of Mil, also variously known as Milesius and later by the, perhaps significant, epithet of Mile Easpain, or the ‘Soldier of Spain’.’

Notice the parallels to the Galician foundational myth of Breogan:

‘…It was left to Mil’s three sons, Eber, Eremon and Amairgen, to defeat the Tuatha and conquer Ireland…Mil’s wife, Scota, was also killed in the expedition and the Gaels of Ireland, considering her to be their ancestral mother, called themselves Scots for that reason…Many years later, from a watchtower on a cliff top, one of Goidel’s descendants, Ith, saw a land far off across the seas that he had not noticed before. ‘It is on winter evenings, when the air is pure, that man’s eyesight reaches farthest,’ explains the account of the vision in the Leabhar Gabhala. Although it is quite impossible ever to see Ireland from Spain, Ith wasn’t to know this and he set sail with 90 warriors to explore the newly sighted country. He arrived at the mouth of the River Kenmare, one of the deep indentations in the coast in the southwest of Ireland…’

Paul and Art, I'm sorry, but on the subject of Breogán, he's as much Gallego as I am Eskimo. It is a fraud consisting of a 19th century appropriation of an Irish myth owing to Galician Celtaphile romanticism.

What's incredible is that, after being repeated over and over again, for more than a century, we have a surprising result in Galicia:

Everybody is convinced that the myth of Breogán is a Galician myth, and in fact at the moment already is it.

And another result which isn't just surprising but extremely surprising:

Now the Irish, too, seem to be beginning to think that Breogán is a Galician myth, or both Galician and Irish.

In fact, I was thinking about writing an article about this for the magazine, Asturies. We'll have to see if I have enough time.

Oops, sorry about my remark about Breogan then, Carlos. I had assumed that the 'Fogar de Breogan' story was a foundational myth of Galicia. My assumption was anecdotal, after seeing the sculpture of Breogan next to the Hercules Tower in A Coruna and thinking it was part of local folklore.

Carlos seems to be saying that the Milesian story is a reinterpreted myth by Galicians in the 19th century. So there go the historic parallels between Irish and Galician myths.

Either way, Bryan Sykes insists that foundational myths should not be discredited wholesale, as they may contain nuggets that can help archaeologists interpret their material finds. In Asturias, it took the official archaeological service C14 testing to determine that Iron Age hillforts like Chao Samartin (County of Grandas de Salime) or Cuana (County of Coana) went back to the end of the Bronze Age. Before that, the University of Oviedo insisted these hillforts were 100% Roman.

In fact, they insisted, everything in Asturias was Roman, as if no one inhabited those lands before the downfall to Rome in 29BC. It took archaeologists from outside Asturias (Jose Luis Maya, from Barcelona) to tell the Asturians that pre-Roman civilization existed and was worth studying. Unbelievable anywhere else, but this was considered the 'politically correct' line in Asturias for a long time. Like economics, archaeology is no hard science...

Carlos seems to be saying that the Milesian story is a reinterpreted myth by Galicians in the 19th century. So there go the historic parallels between Irish and Galician myths.

You're probably right that the supposed historical parallels aren't true. But that also means that the parallels exist in the sense that the Galicians wanted to (and still want to) believe this myth links the cultures.

I’m skipping the complicated story of the Leabhar Gabhala because it’s so hard to follow, with generations of warriors and invaders, including Lugh, the grandson of Balor of the Baleful Eye. Notice the cognate to place names in Asturias and Galicia starting with ‘Lug-‘: Lugo de Llanera, Lugas (County Villaviciosa), Lugo province. But I will include Sykes’ arguments in favor of using origin myths as historical leads.

“As well as powerfully portraying the intense rivalries in early Ireland, the myths and heroes of the Ulster Cycle still exert their effect today. It is no coincidence that a bronze statue of Cu Chulainn, cast in 1916, the year of the Easter Rising, stands today in the hall of Dublin’s main Post Office, which was itself the principal battleground of the Rising and the place where the Republicans held out for longest against the British. Myths are powerful things. And they often contain more than a grain of truth. But as well as these rich origin myths, there is an abundance of solid, archaeological evidence of Ireland’s past.”

On the retreat of ice in continental Europe and the re-colonization of the British Isles:

“The ice had begun to retreat 4,000 years before the main occupation of Mount Sandel, and the colonization of the Isles by the earlier Cheddar Man and his contemporaries had begun at least 3,000 years before. However, the earth wobbled once again in its orbit and there was a sudden and severe ‘cold snap’ between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, which may have forced the human occupants back down south and cleared the Isles once more. The boundary of the ice, which had retreated to more or less its present latitudes, began to spread south again. The sea was frozen right down to northern Spain and the plains of northern Europe reduced once again to barren and inhospitable tundra. But, fortunately, this cold phase—known as the Younger Dryas—lasted only for about 1,000 years.”

“The sea retreated way beyond the Shetland Isles and the sea level rose again as the ice melted. First Ireland was separated from the rest of the Isles at around 8,500 years ago. That put a stop to the colonization of Ireland by some land animals and explains why there are no moles, lizards or snakes in Ireland.”

“Carbon dates from farming sites and the comparison of different pottery styles show that agriculture spread through continental Europe by two principal routes. The split probably came as the first farmers reached the Balkans and the lower Danube from Turkey around 8,500 years ago, about the time that Ireland finally separated from Britain…Meanwhile the other group moved along the Mediterranean coast of Italy, southern France and Iberia. By 7,500 years ago they had reached the Atlantic coast of France. At each point along the way, in the forest and on the seashore, each group of farming pioneers encountered the earlier Mesolithic inhabitants…”

“So, in Ireland, just as elsewhere in Atlantic Europe, the transition to farming from hunter-gathering was gradual and piecemeal and did not necessarily involve sharp changes in the make-up of the Irish population. These signals of the arrival of the Neolithic in Ireland are small and subtle, noticed only by the professional archaeologist. How different, then, from the gigantic stone structures that also appeared in Ireland 1,000 years later. These are the jewels of Irish archaeology…The Oxford archaeologist Barry Cunliffe has studied megalithic structures in the Isles and also in Brittany and along the Atlantic coast of France and Iberia. Rather than a phenomenon solely linked to the Neolithic and the spread of farming, Cunliffe traces their origin to the shell middens of Mesolithic Portugal.”

On the megalithic structures dotting the Atlantic fringe from Portugal to northwestern Spain to Brittany and the British Isles:

“It is only natural to imagine that these gigantic structures, and the complex and mysterious social rituals which their presence suggests, must have been brought about by a wave of new arrivals to Ireland. Yet the clear link to similar, even if not identical, structures along the entire Atlantic coastline, coupled with the early genesis of these structures in the middens of the Mesolithic, could equally well mean that these impressive megaliths are actually one step along the path of a continuous development of monumental architecture along the entire Atlantic fringe from Iberia to the Isles. That is definitely something to bear in mind when we contemplate the living archaeology of the genes.”

“We continually underestimate the skill and capabilities of our ancestors. Why should it come as a surprise that an Irish goldsmith could learn a new, fashionable continental style? It seems to me that the constant tendency to interpret past events in terms of movements is completely the wrong assumption. Surely the correct starting point is to assume that our ancestors were sufficiently resourceful and skilful to pick up virtually any skill. But to find out we need to look at the DNA.”

By the way, I know Mougias has been up to the Pedra da Filadoira on the border of County Eilao/Illano and County Ayande/Allande. I’m going up there soon with friends from La Puela (Pola de Allande) and will post a few pics. But a beautiful megalithic structure similar to the mound tombs described by Sykes in Ireland lies up in a brana (high mountain heath) in County Tineu/Tineo. Drive to the village of Tuna and from there up to Merias/Merilles. Take a ‘calea’ (unpaved path) up the mountain for about 3k and you will come upon a stunning dolmen overlooking the Narcea River. The views are nothing short of majestic...

Yes, very interesting, but the Breogan myth still yet exclusively Irish. There is an alternative explanation. The Leabar Gabala is a part of the Irish epic, it is to say, a very old tales from Iron Age times. This epic was composed of a mix of actual facts of historical kings, some mythological stories about the civilisation (in the strict sense of explanation of the world and the presence of historical Goidels in Ireland: "we are isolated by the sea, how and when did us come here?") and some remains of the old pagan religious system (gods, godesses, druids, dates of the Celtic calendar and the related events, semi-divine heroes, etc).

It is a lot shocking that the dates of disembarkments, invasions and so, correspond to the main sacred dates of its calendar.

The old pagan society began to decay, and later Saint Patrick did the rest. As in all Europe, in the Middle Ages the culture was conserved exclusively in monastical centers. And this is the question: who were those monks? They were "reconverted" druids. All the ancient believes became popular epic, similar to our Hispanic "romances" and "cantares de gesta", and later simply folk tales, the today's situation.

Those monks lovely write all this epic, in no few occasions transforming it in a christianised version, doing it compatible with Christian Faith. It is in this way as ancient gods and godesses became old real people, classified as kings, warlords, saints, etc.

In those centuries a book was a codiciated treasure, everybody in every monastery will kill for a copy. All kind of litterature were expanded on the European net of monastical centers. This is the reason by you can find Irish books in Saint Gall, Swiss.

A person that in modern days we could call "an intellectual", was the Asturian monk Beatus of Liébana. It is a well know fact his exchange of letters with Alcuin of York, for example, about theological matters.

There is a series of events that permitted repeated diffusions of the Irish stories. For example, at the same epoch of the Arturian cycle. Later, Father Carvallo write "Antigüedades y Cosas Memorables del Principado de Asturias". For me it is undoubtable that he readed the Book of the Invasions. He mentions a supposed Asturian hero named "Captain" Brigo that travels by sea towards the British Isles with an army and conquered them. The more shocking thing is that Breoghainn, a Gaelic word, is spelt "Brigo" in Irish, with stress in the first syllabe.

Still later, some Irish come to Spain as refugees, and to obtain more support to its cause tell and tell all the stories which linked Spain and Ireland.

But reality was another. The primitive stories, the lesser christianised ones, did not speak of Spain.

So, in the Celtic believes, the deads go beyond the Ocean, to the South-West, the place where the sun downs the main part of the year, in a wonderful land. The humans come from this myterious land, that Irish called Tir Beó, Tir n-Aill, Mag Mar, Mag Meld, Tir n-An Og (the land of the alives, the other land, the big plain, the pleasant land, the land of ethernal youth, and so...)

In the Christian system there was not any equivalent place. As one see the maritime maps from Roman times, Western Europe appears deformed, and the Iberian Peninsule is placed just to South-West of the British Isles, as you can see it in a copy of the World Map of Claudius Ptolomeus:

But later this version is complicated by Geoffrey Keating, an Irish theologist from 17th century, which says that the ancestors of the Irish come in reality from Holly Land, as descendants of one of the tribes of Israel, as was stated for practically all European peoples at this epoch. In the Keating version, Spain is only a step in a longer journey...

This is the origin of the atribution to the Iberian Peninsule as be the birthplace of the Irish. When and who related those old stories to Galicia is another matter.

Here is a (belated) picture of the megalith about 3k outside of Merias/Merilles, County of Tineu. Do not attempt to walk up on a winter day as the brana (heath) gets frontal westerly winds and the fog sets in quickly. On a previous attempt, we had to turn back because of a blizzard.

Oops, sorry about my remark about Breogan then, Carlos. I had assumed that the 'Fogar de Breogan' story was a foundational myth of Galicia. My assumption was anecdotal, after seeing the sculpture of Breogan next to the Hercules Tower in A Coruna and thinking it was part of local folklore.

Carlos seems to be saying that the Milesian story is a reinterpreted myth by Galicians in the 19th century. So there go the historic parallels between Irish and Galician myths.

Either way, Bryan Sykes insists that foundational myths should not be discredited wholesale, as they may contain nuggets that can help archaeologists interpret their material finds. In Asturias, it took the official archaeological service C14 testing to determine that Iron Age hillforts like Chao Samartin (County of Grandas de Salime) or Cuana (County of Coana) went back to the end of the Bronze Age. Before that, the University of Oviedo insisted these hillforts were 100% Roman.

In fact, they insisted, everything in Asturias was Roman, as if no one inhabited those lands before the downfall to Rome in 29BC. It took archaeologists from outside Asturias (Jose Luis Maya, from Barcelona) to tell the Asturians that pre-Roman civilization existed and was worth studying. Unbelievable anywhere else, but this was considered the 'politically correct' line in Asturias for a long time. Like economics, archaeology is no hard science...